We’ve had a bit of a computer crisis here which is why I’m a bit late posting this week.  See, I managed to trash two computers Monday morning :(

My beloved old laptop was beginning to show geriatric signs and so we decided something needed to be done before it became an out and out emergency.  Myria moved to a desktop system some years ago, which left her Dell laptop free.  Since it was in good shape, it was decided that I would move my files and software to the Dell and shelve the old VAIO.  I did this over the course of the last couple of weeks, not hurrying because the VAIO was still running just fine - if a little noisily.

Monday morning, the transfer and set up of the Dell was finally completed with the installation of a cordless keyboard.  I was up and running and I put the VAIO away for what I thought would be the last time - barring emergencies.  About two hours later, the Dell blew its video display :(

This was troublesome, but I figured I still had the VAIO, so I dug it back out.  It wouldn’t even turn on.

We finally got things resolved this afternoon when Myria bought a new monitor for her desktop and hooked up her old monitor to the Dell laptop (which was otherwise just fine) for me.  Ahh, finally - I have access!

In the meantime, I’ve been knitting away.

This hat uses both the Wood color and the Cedars of Lebanon color (central band) which I spun off from Wood last week.  Until I saw the finished article, I continued to think of both tones as woody in nature.  When I finished the hat and sat back to take it in, I couldn’t think of anything but chocolate and caramel.  I finally had to remand it to the hallway - out of sight - pending delivery next week because it kept making me hungry :)

This one got a little more complex, with cables in the center band (yes, bobbles too) and cables in the top as well.  I fudged in a lot of stitches when picking them up around the band because of how much the cabling would pull the pattern in - but I think I overdid it a little :)  I really don’t want to frog it, so I’m trying to tell myself it’s an interesting experiment and surely someone else out there has a melon as big as mine!  Surely?  Shirley?  Eh…

I am having fun playing with the cables though.  Funny, I’ve been craving cable work for about a month now and really have been enjoying working them for the hat.  A few weeks ago, I even made a much-cabled swatch with the idea of (Shhh - don’t tell anybody!) maybe making a sweater.  The attempt didn’t go anywhere though because the yarn wasn’t up to the job.  So I will find a different yarn and make another attempt :)

In going through the stash, searching for hat-appropriate material (and playing with colors is also something I want to do with these chapeaux…) I discovered that I had two different bags of mohair - a fairly substantial amount and decided that, perhaps, another mohair blanket was in order.  It’s moving slowly because I’m obsessing over hats and cables, but it got under way a couple of nights ago.

Nothing fancy here, just a length of stockinette with garter stitch borders and a row of eyelets thrown in whenever the knitter thinks of it.  I have decided this will be worked a bit more densely than the original (more stockinette than lace) and on smaller needles.  For me, there is nothing to match the luxury and warmth of a mohair blanket.  That said, it seems entirely possible that in addition to the one I already have (which I have dragged with me everywhere), a back-up wouldn’t be out of the question at all :)  The colors I have are many and diverse so this will be a sort of patchwork, I guess. 

I succeeded in finding Easter Egg dye that I liked.  In addition to it being an acceptable price (for what is usually six tablets - red, orange, yellow, green, teal and purple), extra tablets and colors were included so I wound up with roughly twice the amount of dye I would normally have gotten!  And with new colors to play with too - whee!  I was especially pleased because I wound up not acquiring any E.E. dye at all last Easter - not that it slowed me down much :)

But, speaking of dying (we were, right?) I finally have something that’s old enough and has seen enough wear to give me an idea of how the E.E. dye wears over time.  I made Myria’s mitts out of one of the first yarns I ever dyed - Tea Rose.  The yarn was dyed in May 2006 and the mitts were made in July of that year.  During the cool and cold weather of the last two years, they have been in almost constant use - In fact I had to repair a couple of minor holes last week which is how I really noticed the color change.

The upper left side of the picture shows what the mitts’ color looks like these days.  The bottom right part of the image is what I saw when I turned the glove inside out to do the repairs.  As I also had been able to find a scrap of the original dye lot, I was able to confirm that it matched the color of the inside of the gloves while the outside had muted and faded somewhat.

I’m not seriously distressed by this.  These mitts have had, what I would consider to be fairly hard wear, indoors and out and will have to be replaced next year.  Given that, I find the performance of both the yarn (Knitpicks merino, “Bare” fingering weight) and the dye (PAAS E.E. tablets) quite satisfactory.  YMMV, of course :)

And finally, after looking in every supermarket I found myself in, I found this:

My knit-buddy Opal, over at The Akamai Knitter recommended it a while ago and I’ve been searching for it ever since.  I’ll probably have it for lunch tomorrow and am looking forward to it.  Opal, I finally found it!

Last, but not least, I am closing down Knitting Chatters.  Thank you all for participating, it’s been great fun, but its time has come.  Blogging will, of course, continue as usual :)

Hope your weeks are all going well!